Posted
by
timothy
on Saturday April 19, 2014 @10:47AM
from the just-passing-through dept.

jones_supa (887896) writes "In Russia, the State Duma (lower house) on Friday ratified a 2012 agreement to write off the bulk of North Korea's debt. It said the total debt stood at $10.96 billion as of Sept. 17, 2012. Russia sees this lucrative in advancing the plans to build a gas pipe and railroad through North to South Korea. The rest of the debt, $1.09 billion, would be redeemed during the next 20 years, to be paid in equal installments every six months. The outstanding debt owed by North Korea will be managed by Russia's state development bank, Vnesheconombank. Moscow has been trying to diversify its energy sales to Asia away from Europe, which, in its turn, wants to cut its dependence on oil and gas from the erstwhile Cold War foe. Russia's state-owned top natural producer Gazprom is dreaming shipping 10 billion cubic meters of gas annually through the Koreas. Russia has written off debts to a number of impoverished Soviet-era allies, including Cuba. North Korea's struggling communist economy is just 2 percent of the size of neighboring South's."

1. China is in fact allied with North Korea. Much of the "old guard" of Chinese party still remembers Korean war where Chinese were fighting on North's side. Additionally they have a lot of interest in both using North Korea as a suitable proxy for dirtiest clandestine business as well as a massive destabilizer for its regional geopolitical enemies like Japan and South Korea as well as US who has a lot of forces tied countering it. If these forces were freed, they would move to

North Korea accused China of being behind an attempted coup a couple of decades back and relations have been shaky since. Better than with anywhere else, but pretty damn xenophobic just the same and people of Han Chinese descent had to leave or die. China trades with North Korea (and anybody else on the planet no matter what's wrong with them) but they are not allies. The huge markup on oil is an example of that, China takes full advantage of being the only serious trade partner and screws them over, whi

OM F***ing G. I know this is a popular theme on Slashdot, but please STOP. It is wrong, and stems from a serious misunderstanding about what it means to say that "the US owes China money."

Go to your local bank branch, or hop on E*Trade, and buy a $500 US Savings Bond. Congratulations, the US now owes you money! You just gave the US government $500, and they promise to pay you back that $500 in the future plus interest. US bonds and treasury bills are historically among the safest investments in the world, s

To *be* bat-shit crazy, or to *appear* bat-shit crazy? Appearing insane can be an excellent military strategy, especially if you're in an extremely week tactical position such as North Korea is in. It makes your enemies extremely hesitant to provoke you because you may quite possibly engage in a completely disproportional and/or unexpected response. Of course keeping up the appearance requires that you do occasionally actually engage in insane behavior, but a sane commander using such tactics will be extremely canny in employing such behavior only when a studied analysis of the enemy suggests that he can get away with it with minimal real costs. The fact that North Korea is not only still standing, but has managed to repeatedly milk the western world for lucrative concessions despite the apparent insanity of its leaders, strongly suggests that that is the case.

Of course the beauty of such a strategy is that your enemy can never be completely sure exactly how much is an act, and must moderate their own behavior in the face of that uncertainty. Would North Korea launch an all-out attack on our regional allies in response to some moderate provocation, knowing full well that they would be completely obliterated in response? Certainly not. Probably. We hope.

Previous Korean conflict you had the south and its allies against the north and a shared 'border' as it were: you had friendlies to worry about.. All the NK weapons aim south pretty much, and the Americans wanted to appear moral.

A power just wanting to raze the entire area, uncaring of fallout, could employ much more...effective tactics. The very fact that North Korea claims so much as part of its military just makes them that much more fair game. Russia could slaughter North Korea, it's just a matter of

Previous Korean conflict you had the south and its allies against the north

You also had the Red Army on North Korea's side.

Do remember that the NK's last six months on their own, and had pretty much lost their country (the US Army was approaching the northern border of NK with China), when the Chinese came in (and kept the war going another couple years).

Wasn't the US Army actually on the border? The Chinese propaganda goes that McArthur looked across the river and that was taken as the sign that he was going to invade China - that's what was used as the excuse for the Chinese entering the war anyway. Reality is a bit messier especially considering that the core of the North Korean forces had been an organised regional group of Red Army troops for years so the Red Army was fighting fully supplied and equipped in Korea long before China was officially invo

You sure? The fourth largest army (North Korea, active personnel) wouldn't last more than two days against the fifth largest? Not to mention that NK's is by far the largest in the world in terms of reservists. I'm not saying that NK wouldn't be defeated eventually but you seem to think it would be a walk in the park. NK's official policy is "military first" and thus their military actually is very powerful even though the country - as a consequence of that very policy - is piss poor and there's a shortage of practically everything.

But how capable would those reservist truly be? Consider first of all the economic situation in NK: a significant portion of the population is going hungry, if not outright on the verge of starvation. I am sure they keep their active duty soldiers fed decently well, but in the case of a war most of the reservists called up would be physically capable of only limited combat duty. You also have to take into account the quality of the arms available to the reservists: chances are a lot of the reservists wou

You sure? The fourth largest army (North Korea, active personnel) wouldn't last more than two days against the fifth largest? Not to mention that NK's is by far the largest in the world in terms of reservists.

Re-learn the lesson that was the "Russian Steamroller" in WW2. Even an extremely large army that is poorly equipped will fare badly in battle. To play that game, you have to be willing to toss your people into the fire like coal and simply outlast the offensives until some other factor kicks in. Tha

Why would NK ever agree to do anything to help South Korea? They didn't care about paying bak the money anyway, so it's not that.

No, the real reason NK agreed to have a pipeline built through the country is they plan to insert NK frogmen spies into the pipeline to infiltrate the south. The beauty of the plan is, they cannot be spied upon the other way due to the pipe flow!

It was founded by Kim Il-Sung, who had communist ideals, yes. However it has ventured far, far, away from those ideals. Indeed the present day US is vastly closer to being an ideal free-market state than North Korea is to being anything that can be approximated as being close to actual communism.

Indeed the present day US is vastly closer to being an ideal free-market state than North Korea is to being anything that can be approximated as being close to actual communism.

WTF Slashdot? Somehow this got to +5. Seriously?

That's a mighty big assertion. Care to provide, like, any support? North Korea's economy is built on Juche [wikipedia.org], yes, but it is also heavily built on Communism [wikipedia.org] as well. While it varies from pure Marxist theory in that it has a hereditary dictatorship and not a (never yet achieved anywhere) proletarian rule, the absolute state control of the economy is certainly in line with Marxist theory. In fact, up until the 1980s the Chinese and North Korean systems were equall [historyorb.com]

Obviously N.Korea is a communist economic horror story. Russia has zero chance of getting paid back anyway. This method of presentation saves face for the Russian government as it was foolish to loan money to N.Korea in the first place and it also saves face for the concept of communism. This can be pushed as an image of one wonderful communist nation doing a good thing for another communist nation. N.Korea is an open sewer deserving the disrespect of all people, everywhere. And most wonderful fat, midget, leader, with really bad hair cut, is the icing on the cake.

Expect to see a lot more stories like this ie "Availability of Public Diplomacy Program Material Within the United States"
Most of this kind of news was run by the US gov around the world but not for US domestic consumption.
The limits on this kind of gov backed PR, spin within the US ie the Smith-Mundt Act are now lifted.
The sock puppets and public diplomacy types will be flooding US news sites with this kind of material as stories and then shaping comments.https://www.federalregister.go... [federalregister.gov]

The "loan" was foreign aid. No one seriously though North Korea could/would ever pay it back. Kind of like the few hundred million Clinton gave them in exchange for something (doesn't matter what they promised in return, everyone knew they would renege).

Maybe the Russians are just writing off their losses? I've got no idea about the terms of the loan, but if someone owed me a ridiculous amount of money that I knew would never be paid back, I'd settle for 10% of it and a commitment to a payment plan.

In long term, massively. South Korea will get much cheaper gas, and it might have a stabilizing effect and North Korea will likely be even more closely tied to South through the financial benefits of the functioning pipeline, such as transit fees.

The main problem is that North Korea may start behaving like Ukraine with the gas, stealing it from the pipeline and even using it as a weapon against South Korea. But potential of getting gas pipeline in South Korea will likely far outweigh the cons.

Assassinating North Korean leadership would be fairly easy for US today if it wanted to do it.

The reason it's not been done is the fact that sudden power vacuum would cause a collapse of North Korean state, and North Koreans have proven to be extremely difficult to acclimate to South Korean society, where they would massively flood to.

Believe it or not, the biggest proponent of keeping the current leadership in power is South Korea. They are the ones who would take by far the biggest hit from North's collapse. They advocate long term assimilation policy instead, where North Korean leadership is slowly made more and more dependent on South's money until eventually they have to open their own country enough for cultural exchange to start to happen, demolishing the power base.

You seem to view situation as absolute rather than relative. As in relative to what would happen in event of North's collapse. Instead, you apparently think that if North were to collapse, it would just vanish with no negatives involved.

Do they enjoy the current North? Of course not. Is it much better than collapsed North on their border? Of course. North's collapse would cause at least a temporary collapse of social and economic order in the South due to influx of refugees from the North in such an event.

In long term, massively. South Korea will get much cheaper gas, and it might have a stabilizing effect and North Korea will likely be even more closely tied to South through the financial benefits of the functioning pipeline, such as transit fees.

The main problem is that North Korea may start behaving like Ukraine with the gas, stealing it from the pipeline and even using it as a weapon against South Korea. But potential of getting gas pipeline in South Korea will likely far outweigh the cons.

Two questions:

1. Will North Korea agree to let gas pass through its territory to South Korea?

2. More importantly, is South Korea so stupid as to sign on such a deal that could leave them vulnerable to the Pyongyang regime?

i guarantee that at the slightest perceived provocation NK will shut off the gas. KIS is even more of a petulant child than KJI was.

Well... we'll see it easy for North Korea to be outraged over "the slightest perceived provocation" when they have nothing to loose.
Maybe if we give them something to loose, they think twice before deciding to give it up...

It's not like the impoverishing measures currently in place has much effect.

The only places we've recently seen the population rise and demand democracy is in the middle east, wealth, internet, computer, etc. is required to facilitate this..Right now, most North Koreans are probably

...which in turn gives them enough elbow-room to become a bit more belligerent, which in turn de-stabilizes the region. This in turn causes the US and Japan to have to spend their time doing something about it (China couldn't really give a frig, to be honest).

Speculative end result? Putin can take the rest of the Ukraine and any of the other former Soviet states with less attention being paid to it.

It's $11 Billion. I know that sounds like a lot, but it's not really. Not on a Global scale. It might help stabilize North Korea a bit though. They're a poor enough nation to notice it.

To put it in perspective, that's 1/4 of the B-2 program cost, 1/6 of the F-22 program cost, 1/77 of the (projected) F-35 program cost, 1/545 the cost of the Iraq + Afghanistan wars, 1/39 of Exxon's market cap, or 1/7 Bill Gate's net worth.

[Unfortunately?] No. Though I can't think of any post soviet ally that has actually benefitted or gotten ahead from having debt written off. It also occurs to me that many of those states with debt were basically given the debt - Russia gave them things like gas and lumber at particularly low rates but didn't take payment or only took partial payment. So once the debt built up they'd use it as sort of a threat to not go against them. Case in point: Ukraine just got a huge gas bill from Russia http://www.ft.com/cms/s/0/c211... [ft.com] .

I don't know about Korea, but some nation of obese tv-lovin' asshats decided to embargo international trade in...farm machinery, food, medicine and other important things. "Ya, let's starve the shit outta their children. That'll teach 'em good."

Did you know that most of the "evil commies" of yesteryear are dead and gone? The US believes that making sure children starve and die is okay foreign policy. That's just fucked up.

So the US won't trade with them. Ok, but while the US is a large nation, it isn't the be-all, end-all. Canada, the EU, China, Russia, they are all perfectly ok to trade with Cuba. So Cuba has access to most of the world for trade goods. Yet, they still have an extremely low standard of living.

Sorry, but the US boogeyman thing doesn't play, not in this day and age. Cuba has a large responsibility for the problems in Cuba.

That's not the enlightened view. Everything that goes wrong is always someone else's fault. It's the #1 Truth of progressive thinking. Poor people are poor because someone else made them poor. If socialist policies don't fix everything, it's because someone else interfered. If all the someone elses could just be burned or imprisoned or gassed or reeducated, society's problems could finally be solved and progressive paradise would be achieved.

If socialist policies don't fix everything, we'll try again. And again. We'll pay attention to what we did right, and what we did wrong. We'll do better. We'll make progress. That's why we're called 'progressives'.

What we will _not_ do is stick our heads in the sand and pretend some mythical 'invisible hand' is going to make it all better. Name me one complex problem that was made better by doing nothing about it?

Have you never heard of the Helms-Burton Act which penalizes any company that deals with Cuba including the executives never being able to travel to the USA. This basically means every company has a choice, do business with the USA or do business with Cuba and guess which is more profitable or even possible (Canadian planes often fly over US territory and despite international law, America has these extra-national no-fly lists and can veto passengers)https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/... [wikipedia.org]

Go to Canada some time, one of the US's closest allies. You'll find that you can travel to Cuba freely, buy Cuban goods (cigars being the most prominently advertised as being of Cuban origin) and so on.

The US is the only country that clings to an embargo and it is purely a face-saving maneuver, not wanting to admit it was a bad idea and hasn't worked to unseat Castro.

However for all that, Cuba is still poor... So sorry, you can't blame the big, bad 'ole US for this. Their policy is not helpful, but it isn't

Compare Cuba to Domincan Republic. Both are quite similar except for the politics - Dominican Republic had an US sponsored coup and is very much capitalist because of that. Still Cuba has a higher GDP and a higher HDI. Or take Jamaica. A capitalist constitutional monarchy and a commonwealth realm with close ties to the Brits. Still, same here, Cuba has a higher GDP and a higher HDI.

Funny thing though. North Korea used to have a milder form of government than South Korea and the people were also better off - up to the early 1970ies. Then the former went downwards, while the latter shot upwards.

America certainly has it's issues but Putin seems determined to turn Russia into a nuclear armed banana republic. Look at this list. [wikipedia.org] Russia, styling itself a great power, has impoverished its people to a state worse than Croatia and 56 other countries. Not far ahead of Botswana. Amazing power, that.

I'm really weirded out by all the people who give accolades to Putin lately. Russia's a shithole man. It's an oligarchy, flat out. He's not standing up to anyone. Standing up would be helping people and NOT debt slaving them with the IMF. How is invading the Ukraine when it's down in any way brave or good?

If you care to read the news it was Russia that was providing financial support to Ukraine, and when a pro-Russia government was democratically elected the United States overthrew the elected government through a coup and the use of US mercenaries.

Invading Syria would have worked as well as invading Afghanistan and Iraq did....

Everyone's all PO'ed at Obama for using diplomacy instead of War.

It's diplomacy that has Iran giving up their enriched uranium. It's (accidental) diplomacy that got Syria to give up their chemical weapons. Diplomacy works. War? Afghanistan and Iraq aren't going too well for us. There's no infrastructure, no democracy, tons of opium, and the Taliban are stronger now than they used to be.

So what makes a strong President? Reagan who's first act was handing over a ransom to terrorists or Carter who would not deal with them but couldn't stop them either? There hasn't been a "strong" President in a long time but is that really a bad thing? Would having someone "strong", such as a Putin type who people like to please by killing off journalists he doesn't like for a birthday present, actually be a good thing?While a "strong" President will go to extreme lengths to get what they want personally

That weakling got Osama, has Iran giving up it's highly enriched Uranium to lift the sanctions, and cut a deal that got Syria to give up their chemical weapons. There are other measures of strength than blowing shit up. Diplomacy works.

Now, as a dirty lib, I do believe he is a weak president on the homefront. Dude hasn't even TRIED to fulfill his campaign promises and keeps trying to cut deals with the Republicans who clearly aren't going to give him squadoo even though he gives them 90% of what they want

Fundamentally, you seem to believe that Iran and Syria have, in fact, given up their WMD's (poison gas in the one case, enriched uranium in the other).

So, do you have any actual evidence that this is true?

Without international inspections (which neither country has allowed), it's not like there is any way to know for sure whether all the poison gas manufacturies (in the one case) have been revealed, much less shutdown. Ditto the enriched uranium (in the other case).

"Syria’s ability to produce chemical weapons has been destroyed and its remaining toxic armaments secured, weapons inspectors said Thursday, as President Bashar al-Assad has offered unexpectedly robust cooperation".

Yes, I have evidence that this is true. That's because I listen to evidence before coming up with my opinion, instead of forming my opinion and then looki

That weakling got Osama, has Iran giving up it's highly enriched Uranium to lift the sanctions, and cut a deal that got Syria to give up their chemical weapons. There are other measures of strength than blowing shit up. Diplomacy works.

Now, as a dirty lib, I do believe he is a weak president on the homefront. Dude hasn't even TRIED to fulfill his campaign promises and keeps trying to cut deals with the Republicans who clearly aren't going to give him squadoo even though he gives them 90% of what they wanted anyway. Sigh....

If you're going to hate on Obama, hate on him for real reasons. His foreign policy had strengthened us, not weakened us. Bush is the one that took us from having the whole world supporting us to having everyone revile us. Again....

Seriously? Are you that naive?

1. The US Military and Intelligence Services got Osama. All Obama did was say: "OK" and a day later "I gave the order to kill Osama..."

2. Do you really think that Iran doesn't have other sites that inspectors have not yet found? Also, they can still make more because they didn't give up the capability!

Oh, PLEASE tell us all how the Arab Spring was Obama's fault... And Fuck Israel.

Nobody takes us seriously because we started two wars over bad intelligence. No one takes us seriously because we talk about democracy and freedom and then invade countries that don't do what we say. Nobody takes us seriously because we've overthrown democratically elected governments. No one takes us seriously because we're a f'in joke.... We're a child with a giant stick running around hitting other children

It's weird, but plenty of countries are taken seriously without waving their military around. Japan's taken seriously, and they don't even have a military to speak of! We wield enough economic and cultural power that we shouldn't even have to use our military. And strangely enough, when we DO use diplomacy and sanctions, stuff gets done.

Not being USA-ian...statements that have come out publicly against Obama are not only personally offensive but are against the State: i.e. Treasonous

Agreed, you're clearly not a USA-ian. We don't respect authority, here. And we don't really respect people who suggest that we should respect authority. So, go kiss your king's...ring. Ya, know, I've lost a lot of respect for my country in the last decade-and-a-half, but thanks for reminding me why this is still the place for me and my treasonous attitudes.

Obama was on Seal Team Six? I didn't know that. He was working with the CIA to track down Bin Laden in Pakistan, before he was President?...

When Obama became President, no one in the CIA was tracking down bin Laden in Pakistan. In 2005 George W. Bush shut down the CIA unit tasked with tracking bin Laden (code named Alec Station and established in 1996 by Bill Clinton).
"C.I.A. Closes Unit Focused on Capture of bin Laden" [nytimes.com].

It took an executive action by Obama to recreate an intelligence unit to pick up the hunt, and then a tough call to send the SEAL team in when the intelligence about bin Laden's presence was still uncertain. A weaker man would

Globalfirepower rank them about the same, though they include a lot of factors, but shouldn't all those be included?

Sure the US have twice as many people and earn more money (but it's much more unevenly spread and less end up in the government coffins) and spend more money on the military (then again I don't know whatever Russia pay them and if so I guess they pay less and that more production may be government owned or at least be bought for cheaper.)

Globalfirepower rank them about the same, though they include a lot of factors, but shouldn't all those be included?

I would take the "Globalfirepower" rankings a tad more seriously if they revealed the model they used to combine and weight all those factors, and if they weren't a "link farm" site that lists itself as being "for entertainment only" and the people running it weren't completely anonymous. There is no reason to attach any credibility to the ranking scores they offer.